On the second day of the MPA’s 10th annual
Independent Magazine Media Conference (IMAG), industry publishers got a peek at
first-quarter numbers for the newsstand, which showed a mix of declines and
gains. In a mid-morning session Gil Brechtel, president and CEO of
the Magazine Information Network, or MagNet, offered a picture of the current
climate during his “Realities at Retail” session. On the whole, the newsstand
continues to see significant drops, but he said that trends surrounding
bookazines and special issues continue to fair well—proving that readers are
still willing to buy print on the newsstand. “We just released our first quarter, 2013 numbers and the
pain continues,” Brechtel said. “During the first quarter sales were down 11
percent in dollars and 14.5 percent in units sold. This is the largest
quarterly sales decline we’ve ever seen when you compare period-to-period and
year-over-year numbers.” The top 50 titles and titles ranked lower than 1,000 in
retail sales dollars represented about 97 percent of the sales losses—around
$96 million. Titles ranked 51-1,000, however, collectively performed fairly
well and represent over 50 percent of the magazine business.
